This show is so shitty.

How shitty is it?

It’s so shitty that even Alton Brown can’t make it interesting.

Bor-ring!

For some reason this awesomeness slipped through my fingers last December. It’s Anthony Bourdain having an Xmas bird with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme.

This is either a wonderful dream or a terrible nightmare. 

For your health!

Jamie Oliver’s new cooking show is awesome.

It’s odd they named it “at home” considering all his other shows were filmed at his main home in London. This show takes place at his fancy country home where the fucker grows copious amounts of his own amazing, beautiful produce. Also, this home has like three or four kitchens. One of them being outside. With a wood burning oven. Fucker.

Every episode is seasonal, so you won’t see him making anything with, say, tomatoes right now. Using only seasonal produce also means that the shit he uses is not only readily available, but dirt cheap. Things like raddichio, carrots, beets, fennel and squashes. The only expensive thing you will have to purchase is super good quality extra virgin olive oil, as he drizzles it over everything.

Jamie At Home is on the Food Network. Only on Saturdays at 9:30am. Get a DVR as I think this is one of the very few cooking shows worth watching.

The US version of the accompanying cookbook won’t be available until October ($25), but already out in the UK, which you can order it through UK Amazon ($36 with shipping). Some of the dishes on the show I’ve found in his Cook with Jamie book.

I hope in his next series he raises, slaughters and butchers all sorts of livestock.

Oh, these? Yeah, I grow my own potatoes. What, you don’t? 

I spent a weekend watching the entire first season of Showtime’s “The Tudors”. It’s about the early days of King Henry VII and watches like Melrose Place, except with more graphic sex scenes. They put a lot of money into the beautiful costumes and CGIs of castles, but my only complaint is that they put no research and no money into the food. The king’s feasts usually include lots of bunches of grapes, some citrus fruits, pomegranates and figs. Where are all the thirty course banquets with four foot tall swans made out of pastry crust and decorated with real feathers? I found this information about food in The Tudor period online:

“Three-quarters of the Tudor diet was made up of meat - oxen, deer, calves, pigs or wild boar. They also ate a lot of chicken and other birds - pigeons and sparrows. Peacocks may have been eaten by the very rich.

Meat was roasted, boiled or made into pies. Fish was baked, fried, grilled or boiled.

Tudor food was served in a sauce flavoured with herbs and spices.

Bread was always served with a meal.”

Where’s the beef, Showtime? Can’t you hire some art school intern with a laptop and some Fimo clay?

“The Tudors” on Showtime. First season available on On Demand or on Netflix. Second season starts soon.

Sexual content: A

Betrayel content: A

Food content: F-

Throw a food nerd a bone.

There’s a cooking show on WLIW 21 called Everyday Food that is produced by Martha Stewart. I’m not quite sure of the premise, but I think it’s about a bunch of lesbians with no personalities who live in a house and take turns cooking in an awesome looking kitchen with awesome equipment and an awesome view. They cook simple, (mostly) fresh, healthy food. And they do it painfully slow. I want to reach into the television, grab them by the collar and tell them to hurry the fuck up I’m fucking hungry why the fuck is it taking you ten minutes to chop a fucking pepper you fucking donkey and why the fuck do you all have french manicures and handle raw produce like it’s a live cockroach fucking get in there and cook with some balls you goddamn automatons.

ChewFood grade of food made: A-

ChewFood grade of hosts: D+

Just because you are a woman it doesn’t mean you have to cook like a pussy. 

Before there was Netflix. Before there was BlockBuster. There was Video Orchard, our local independent video store on Long Island. Complete with back room for adults, separated with a beaded curtain. Over and over again I’d rent this one tape of Disney’s Silly Symphonies just to watch this one food cartoon:

Apparently there’s a short clip of me cooking at The Restaurant on NY1 (local NYC tv channel). It’s part of a segment about the new Zagat Best of Brooklyn book . I haven’t seen it yet and the NY1 OnDemand is janky.

If I had my own cooking show, it would pretty much look like this.

So, yeah, been meaning to write about Hell’s Kitchen for a couple of weeks now. I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t do it before the most recent episode because then I would have to eat crow. The third and fourth episodes were totally boring and I was all ready to complain. And what the hell was up with the Asian cowboy guy who totally sucks and is a huge pussy? UGH. Come ON, dude! Ugh… of course they get some chef from a pension home, and not a badass chef like the dudes from God of Cookery. I mean, I knew right from episode one that he wasn’t gonna be bustin out some esoteric traditional Szechuan dish or Oyster brains in sea cucumber penis sauce or something, but you could have done better than sitting around and crying the whole time. Way to let us down and be a huge pussy.

Anyway, on Monday things got more interesting. The redhead with the soul-patch and the huge boobs went nutso, and it was hilarious. She was running around like a lost toddler (ugh), but instead of asking FOR help, she was offering it. The whole wedding thing was kinda lame. However, it spawned the best part of the episode: when Jean Phillipe totally pwnd the wedding planner, sending him to talk to Gordon rather than answering his question. That sneaky Belgian.

Chef at Home: If you took Aiden from Sex and the City and made him a chef instead of a furniture designer, you’d get this guy. An ex-restaurant chef, he premises his show on making foods without a recipe and showing you how you can too. And add a smidge of Alton Brown’s food science. Take away points for the worst theme song ever recorded (it’s so bad, that I have to fast forward through it because I get embarrassed). In one episode, he made New England clam chowder with whole fresh steamed clams, biscuits and a simple salad with a vinaigrette. Kinda like “Carrie, add a bit of this, balance it out with an acid, throw in whatever veg and herbs you have in your fridge and voila. It’s easier than shopping for a pair of Manolos, babe!”.
ChewFood grade: B+

The Best: A BBC program on Discovery Home. It’s shot a la The Naked Chef or Oliver’s Twist - fast pasted with a shaky camera spliced with extreme close ups (eXtreme shooting!). There are three cooks, two dudes (one’s an Aussie) and one chick. They are given two different dishes to make, like the best noodle bowl or the best veg side dish, in their own style. Then they have to hand their food off to three random people who judge which dish is the best. They do a lot of Asian and Indian influenced dishes. It’s a fun show, especially since I find the three cooks to be at different levels (the male Brit being the most refined and the female to be the simplest). I enjoy it, but I don’t crap myself over it like I do with Jacques Pepin.
ChewFood grade: B+

No Reservations: Anthony Bourdain’s travel show. I’m not gonna review NR. I’m gonna make a plea for someone to please please please pick up Lonny Gerungan’s show or give him an American show. Chef Lonny showed Chef Tony around the street food of Indonesia. He’s this uber flamboyant dude who’s all amped up on goof balls and yak’s dong. Think of Ming Tsai meets Mark from Ugly Betty.
ChewFood grade of NR: A-
ChewFood grade of Chef Lonny: A